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They die. Every last one of the sorcerers die.
Gojo watches every last one of them. He stares at the endless pools of blood, the piled up bodies and it’s unnerving how much he doesn’t care about any of it. He’s watching the world burn and it’s terrifying how much it doesn’t bother him.
After all, Gojo saw this coming from a mile away.
After all, he’s the reason this is happening, anyway.
Gojo has always been told not to play with fire and the one thing about him is that he doesn’t like to be told what to do. He’s always been a lone wolf — until Geto came, but then he left — and he’s never, ever operated on someone else’s beliefs. He’s always been just his own.
There is something about Sukuna that Gojo is drawn to from the day he meets him in Yuuji’s body.
Maybe it’s the power. Maybe it’s the crazed look in his eye. Maybe Gojo sees more of himself in the King of Curses than he’d like to admit. They both know what it’s like to be the best and they both know what it’s like to be completely alone at the top. So powerful that they’re untouchable.
The thing about Gojo is that he likes playing with fire. He’s easily bored and accessing Sukuna is easy. He’s just a trigger away.
All Gojo has to do is tell Yuuji that he wants to talk to Sukuna. It takes convincing, a whole lot of it, but all Gojo has to do is bat his eyelashes and Yuuji is a goner.
They talk a lot. Most of it is threatening — courtesy of Sukuna — and Gojo’s thinly-veiled admiration of that level of power. He’s pretty sure Sukuna knew, even then, that there was something fucked about Gojo from day one. Maybe that’s why, despite the threats of disappearing, Sukuna kept coming back.
He knew it’d happen someday. Maybe Gojo would push Yuuji hard enough and Sukuna would take over forever, or Yuuji would end up swallowing the twenty fingers and Sukuna, at his full power, would discard his host body. Gojo knows full well what that meant.
Yuuji, dead. Megumi, dead. Nobara, Maki, Mai, Inumaki, Panda, Yuuta. Dead. The children he swore he’d protect with his life would die.
When Sukuna traps Gojo in his domain expansion, Gojo has the power to stop it but he doesn’t. He wants to see where this is going. He wants to taste the power of someone who’s just as powerful as him for once in his life.
Because the only thing Satoru Gojo has ever wanted is an equal.
“Doesn’t it kill you — ” Sukuna asks, sitting on a pile of bodies so high that Gojo can’t make out the faces of his friends anymore. “ — to be weakened like this, sorcerer?”
Weak? Oh.
Gojo takes a gander at his outward appearance. The tattered rags on his body that used to be an expensive uniform, the bruises snaking up his arms and legs colored blue and purple. The blood currently smeared across the bridge of his broken nose, his lips. The first place where Gojo’s eyes go, though, are the discarded sunglasses tossed across the domain.
That’s the first thing Sukuna did when he laid his hands on Gojo. Got rid of his sunglasses.
That makes Gojo laugh, though it quickly dissolves into a tirade of coughs and wheezes. Sukuna curls his lip and sneers — if it’s disgust or rage, Gojo can’t really tell. He can’t be fucked enough to take another look at Sukuna. He’s on the verge of giving out.
Gojo is exhausted. The only other person who ever exhausted him like this was Toji. The only person who got the privilege of saying that he got to kill humanity’s most powerful sorcerer. Until Gojo killed him, too.
“Something on your mind, sorcerer?” Sukuna asks, his voice a deep, low drawl and somewhere inside Gojo, it makes a cavity, makes a home and lives inside him. He descends the throne, white robes and bloody hands and fuck, Gojo can’t take his eyes off him. This murderer. This killer. This evil incarnate.
But, above all, Gojo’s equal.
“You look especially… pained.” Sukuna continues. He stops somewhere near Gojo’s limp body, where he lies on the ground. “Shall I put you out of your misery?”
“Has anyone told you you talk a lot?”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
Gojo smiles, then winces, coughing up a bout of blood. If he chokes to death on his own blood, that’d be a pretty pathetic way to go. It won’t be as much of a dramatic story as Gojo hoped it would be, it would be nothing to write home about. Gojo can’t accept that.
He reaches deep inside himself, pulling on the last bit of strength that he has left and he stands. Sukuna lets it happen, watching him amusedly like a scientist watching a lab rat before he zaps the poor animal.
“I’m going to kill you.” Gojo manages to say, bursting into a fit of coughs. Sukuna is close enough for Gojo to feel the heat emanating from his body, almost as if it’s his own.
“I’d like to see you try. I encourage you to try! After all, one can’t be a god without some foolish mortal who thinks he’s better challenging him, right?” Sukuna says, and he smiles. It’s uncanny, unnerving. “Give it your best shot, sorcerer.”
The thing is, Gojo is tired. He’s tired, he’s beat and he’s bruised and infinity is around them, swallowing him whole, consuming every last bit of his energy — and Sukuna is laughing. He’s laughing. He cackles like a mad dog, like someone who’s tasted all the power this world has to offer and Gojo closes his eyes.
He falls.
Satoru Gojo, the world’s last hope, humanity’s greatest sorcerer — falls.
Sukuna lets Gojo slump at his feet. Infinity still surrounds them, swirls of purples and pinks and stretched time as Gojo realizes he’s never knelt for a man before. But Sukuna isn’t a man nor is he human nor is lesser than Gojo. There’s no shame in this.
Sukuna scoffs. “Rise, sorcerer. Or has the fight already left your pathetic body?”
It hurts. It hurts all over. Gojo can taste the dirt, the grime, the blood mixed into the fabric of his domain and he can see the anger, the disgust written all over Sukuna’s face, even when he doesn’t see him. Sukuna’s equal, falling at his feet.
“I won’t say it twice.” Sukuna drawls, and he bends down to grab a fistful of Gojo’s hair in the grip of his hand. He yanks. “You promised me a fight.”
Gojo can’t think of a witty response fast enough before he feels a searing pain consume him from the inside out. It burns and it burns and Gojo screams loud, voice echoing in the void of his domain expansion before Gojo realizes what’s happening.
Sukuna is using a reverse cursed technique to heal him.
The pain is excruciating and it feels like hours before the process is completed. Gojo’s wounds heal, bruises disappear and his skin positively glows. Not even the tea tree masks Nobara once got him made him look so good. Gojo coughs, mind bloody and battered but his body is as good as new.
It’s with a new surge of energy that Gojo rises to his feet. Sukuna smiles, though it looks more like a grimace than anything. He really didn’t take any of Yuuji’s personality now, did he?
Gojo thinks of making that comment, then thinks twice, but before he makes a decision, Sukuna is standing in front of him, bloodied hands reaching to curl beneath Gojo’s chin. He yanks, bringing their faces so close together that Gojo can see the ripples in his skin as his smile stretches into more of a psychotic grin.
“This is your true form, sorcerer.” Sukuna mutters. “Don’t you ever forget it.”
The domain holds even when Gojo slots his mouth against Sukuna’s.
Sukuna laughs against his lips like he’s seen this coming from a mile away and it’s humiliating and exhilarating and infinity bursts from Gojo’s fingertips. The domain holds even when Sukuna grabs the back of his neck to deepen the kiss. He tastes like everyone Gojo has ever lost.
This is it. This is what true power feels like. Gojo thinks about the end of the world and he finds that he really, really doesn’t care.